Part III

"Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are."

—St. Augustine

Chapter Eleven – Last Rites

They could have broken through, if they'd wanted, but no one tried. Instead they sat around the library table, each on their own side with no one properly taking charge of the situation.

Then again, there wasn't much direction to take.

"I don't—I don't know what we can do," Lily said.

"Not much." James removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I wanted—I'd send her back to England, if I could. But we've no way of getting her back anytime soon. I doubt there's a Floo connection or something in—where we're going, and none of us learned how to make Portkeys that strong."

"We'll need to reorganize the shift schedule," Remus said. "She can't go on watch. That's—that's too much time alone."

Sirius grimaced, but whether it was out of sympathy or annoyance, Lily couldn't tell.

James put his glasses back on. "She'll probably want time alone."

"But not right now," Lily said. The day of her parents' death…. She'd have paid people not to be alone. Fortunately, it hadn't come to that. Unfortunately, Petunia had never excelled at comforting people. "At least, I don't think so, but I'm going to get Caradoc. Maybe he can get through to her."

Remus and James both nodded: Remus as a cursory acknowledgment, James as though the idea hadn't occurred to him.

Lily made her way down to the galley, noting Peter's squat form in the crow's nest, and knocked before entering.

"Come in," Caradoc called.

"Hey." Lily gave him a sad smile and stepped through the doorway. It smelled clean inside, and a stack of dishes sat on the counter next to the empty but still-wet sink.

He gestured for Lily to take a seat, but she shook her head.

"Er, bad news," she said, one hand wringing the fingers of the other. "That is. Er. Marlene's just lost her entire family to Death Eaters."

"Oh. Oh, no." His hands dropped to set down the serving dish he'd been holding, as though it suddenly weighed ten times more than it had a second ago.

"She's locked herself in James's cabin and won't answer us, and I don't—I thought you might try to see if you can get her to talk. James and the others are refusing to try, and I haven't known her very long, and you're—you, and I don't really—" Lily crossed her arms. "I'm not sure what to do."

"It's not your responsibility to single-handedly help her."

"I want to, though. Not single-handedly. Not that I'd know what to say."

Caradoc nodded. "It's hard to console someone after a loss like that."

"But you'll try?"

"I'll try, but I'm not sure I'll have better luck." He flicked his wand to send the dish into a cupboard and followed Lily out of the galley. "I'm happy to see you're free to move around again."

"Yes, well, it turns out none of you are pirates and that I am, in fact, a Muggle-born thief."

He offered a small smile. "I'm sorry I lied to you. Even if it was indirect."

"Well, James made you, or so I'm told, and he's the captain…."

It wasn't nothing, that they'd lied to her. She'd never have tried to solve the map if James hadn't lied about being pirates, and then he wouldn't have caught her sneaking around, and then maybe he would have let her go in Oporto.

But there were other things to worry about at the moment than what might have been.

When they emerged from the gun deck, they found Dorcas near the library, forearms resting on the railing at the side of the ship. She turned to see it was Lily, and a faint grimace passed over her face.

"Go on in," Lily told Caradoc.

He nodded, and Lily walked over to Dorcas, who kept looking out at the waves, eyes flicking about, mouth tenser than usual.

Although Lily tended to find herself around people more often than not, she didn't mind being alone most of the time. But right now, being on a ship on the open sea, where her mother would have traded near anything to be…. Lily couldn't go back into the library with James and his mates. Nor could she face the thought of sitting in the common room alone.

So Lily stood in silence with Dorcas, the ship smashing through the waves, the occasional spray of water misting up their way, for a good long while.

And, for the first time, Lily thought she might actually understand Dorcas.

Lunch was a subdued affair. James took over in the crow's nest, Caradoc had taken up vigil outside James's cabin, and Dorcas refused to move from her position, leaving the other half of the crew with sandwiches in the common room.

Someone—probably Sirius—had tacked the wanted poster of Lily to the wall by the table. It hung askew, the edges frayed.

"I'm surprised the spell creating it has held up," she told Remus, nodding toward the poster. It seemed a safer conversation topic than the other macabre thoughts that wouldn't leave her alone.

"Oh, I'm confident James drew that," he said. "He's actually quite talented."

The drawing of her was much prettier than her real face. The poster version had hair that fell in nicer waves than Lily's, which was constantly a mess from the wind, and her mouth had a teasing tilt to it, amused and daring. Her mother's mouth, or so she'd always been told.

Lily frowned. "But if he was following me around Oporto—he must've drawn that quickly."

"He used to do flash portraits of people in Hogwarts," Peter said, a little sadly. "Dead good ones, too."

Sirius nodded. "Think I've still got one somewhere, that one of Dorcas." He shot Remus a knowing look.

Remus ducked his head, the corners of his mouth twitching. "I'd forgotten about that."

"Did he deliberately mess it up or something?" Lily asked.

"Nah," Sirius said, leaning his chair back on two legs, gesturing lazily with his sandwich, "he drew her looking all cheerful, think he added a bow to her hair or something."

Lily muffled a laugh with her hand. It seemed inappropriate to laugh, but it came out anyway, quiet but sharp.

"She jinxed him bald," Peter said fondly. "They didn't speak for two weeks."

"Why did he draw her that way in the first place?" she asked.

Sirius shrugged. "Why did he put an eye patch on his cat?"

Lily conceded the point with a nod.

"I was looking forward to soup," Peter lamented, setting down his half-eaten sandwich. "I haven't eaten a sandwich since we left England, and I haven't missed them."

Remus fixed Peter with a scathing look, and Peter averted his eyes to his lap.

"I'm only saying," Peter said. "I'm not—not blaming him."

They lapsed into silence, none of them properly looking at each other.

"Did James tell you what happened to them?" Peter asked.

Sirius let his chair fall forward and hunched over his plate, his chin ducked. "He wouldn't."

"Oh. I suppose it was an attack, so it's classified and all that…."

"No," Sirius said roughly. "James just didn't want to tell us."

Remus studied his plate. "Eli deserved better. They all did."

"Bloody good man, Eli," Sirius said.

Remus nodded glumly. "He'll be a challenge to replace."

"Benjy can manage all right for a while," Peter said. "And Marlene will be back soon enough."

He didn't look heartened by that, though, and neither did Sirius or Remus.

Lily didn't know Eli, but she knew Marlene, who was probably curled up in a ball.

Or perhaps not. It had been so quiet on the other side of James's door. Either Marlene had been eerily silent , or she'd cast a spell on the door and was actually in the process of systematically destroying James's things. But Algernon was inside, and she wouldn't put him at risk.

Maybe she only needed Algernon for company right now.

"We should have a funeral," Peter said, eyes on his plate.

Remus tilted his head. "What do you mean?"

"I—I mean, not a funeral, because we don't have bodies, but…I dunno."

"Like a ceremony," Lily agreed. "Something."

She'd missed her parents' funeral, hadn't hung around long enough for it to happen. She'd never forgive herself for it, either.

Remus nodded. "Yes, some sort of send off…it might help. Good idea, Peter."

Sirius looked skeptical, but said nothing, instead finishing off his sandwich. He pushed back in his chair. "Tonight, you think? The shifts are already wonky."

"Might as well." Remus dusted the crumbs off his hand and stood up. "I'll talk to James."

Everyone else seemed to be leaving, so Lily had to follow – she couldn't be alone right then.

The map would be a good distraction, if it were available.

"Do you think the library's going to be off-limits again?" Lily asked. "Even if Peter's in there, I mean."

"Yes," Sirius said, right as Remus said, "I'm not sure."

"James," Lily concluded.

Remus nodded, and Sirius scoffed.

"Just tell her everything, then." Sirius headed for the door. "She's done nothing untrustworthy at all."

Lily began stacking their plates. "Will you shut it if I give you your wand back?"

"No."

"Right. No wand for you, then."

"You don't have it."

She arched an eyebrow at him. "I'll just toss it in the ocean if you don't want it."

"Points for your performance, but it's no use taunting me. We went through your things."

"Oh, of course I can't have your wand. Because I'm a Death Eater, according to you, and so therefore I must not be able to hide things from you. Or wait, isn't that the attitude you'd take toward a Muggle-born? Do make up your mind, Sirius. Which am I?"

"Who says you can't be both?"

"Logic," Remus sighed.

"You Know Who could be holding her family hostage or something."

"He's right," Peter said to Remus. But while Sirius walked out the door, Peter threw Lily a vaguely apologetic look.

Lily looked away. True as it was, Sirius probably wouldn't believe her if she argued that there wasn't anyone in her life to take hostage.

Remus held the door open for her and offered her a faint smile, and that did help, some.

They weren't friends. Not when there were so many secrets between them. Not when they'd been willing to believe her a Death Eater not a day earlier.

But it was nice not feeling entirely alone.

While Sirius and Remus climbed down to the gun deck, Lily followed Peter over to the shroud off the main mast.

"D'you think I'll get to learn what you're working on?" she asked.

"Er, I'm not sure." Peter grabbed hold of the ropes. "It's sort of…secret."

"I did pick up on that."

"So…ask James."

"He doesn't like telling me things."

"He didn't. But he told you we weren't pirates, didn't he?"

"I think he realized the ruse wouldn't last forever."

"Yeah, well, it was fun, a bit."

Lily hummed noncommittally and watched Peter begin to climb up to the crow's nest. He moved slowly, thinking through each move before he made it.

She leaned backwards against the rail and waited for James to come down. Unlike Peter, he scaled the ropes with ease, barely watching where he was going. He hopped down the last few lines of rope to stand next to Lily.

"Hullo," he said.

"Hi. I think we need to talk, yet."

"Yeah." He ruffled up his already wind-strewn hair. "Probably. Navigation room should be clear."

She trailed him up the stairs to the quartercastle deck, past the helm, and into the navigation room. Her fingers twitched when she noticed the outline of her bag in his pocket. If they'd been on the streets of Brest or Oporto, she'd have simply pulled it out of his pocket, but that seemed counterproductive at this stage.

He pulled out a chair for her, his hand gently guiding her by the small of her back as she stepped around him to sit down. His palm was warm through her shirt, and she missed it when it let go.

When she'd settled in, he took the seat next to hers.

"So," he said.

"So."

"What did you have in mind?"

"I thought—I thought you wanted Sirius's wand back."

"Oh. Yeah, 'course. If you've got it, that is, although where you're keeping it…."

"Well, I have it in a manner of speaking. It's in my mokeskin bag, the one in your pocket."

"S'pose I shouldn't be too surprised." He pulled her bag out and tossed it onto the table in front of her, the coins inside clinking. "I thought you might've Transfigured it, or Charmed the bag, but if you want to go ahead and reveal its secrets, I won't object."

"Would you give me a moment alone to do this?"

"No." He caught the offended look that flashed across her face before she could suppress it. "Lily, I trust you now, all right? But you make it so difficult."

"I've got personal belongings in here."

"I'm not going to tell anyone else what you have in there. You know I won't."

And maybe she was foolish for trusting him, but he'd yet to harm her. He'd lied about being a pirate, but even that had apparently been for her own protection. Stupid, noble bastard.

Stupid, noble, handsome bastard with his tousled hair just so.

Her cheeks heated, and she wrenched her gaze from his hazel eyes to her bag.

"All right," she muttered.

She dumped her coins and hairpins onto the table, inverted her bag, and pulled Sirius's wand out.

"Maybe now he'll leave me alone." She set the wand on the table with more force than was strictly necessary.

"Probably not. Maybe more than he did." He craned his neck to try to see into her bag. "But that's an interesting bag you've got there. Can I see it?"

Lily hesitated, hand tightening around her bag, but then she gave it over. There wasn't anything scandalous inside.

He held up the bag in front of his face and rotated it, examining the exterior. "I've seen ones that open outright into wizard space, but not this inverted version. Brilliant." He rummaged around inside and pulled out her dagger, raising his eyebrows. "Unarmed, eh?"

"I didn't use it, did I?"

"No," he allowed, and placed it back in the bag. He took out the book, scanned the title, and slid it across the table to her. "Have at that," he said absently, and picked up her necklace.

Lily nearly sat on her hands to keep from grabbing it away from him. No one had touched it but her since that man had stolen it.

James only glanced over it, though, and handed it back to her. "It's beautiful."

"My parents gave it to me." She draped the chain around her neck and stretched her arms back to snap the clasp shut.

It was just a silly, teardrop shaped pendant. It wasn't a royal jewel, or a family heirloom, or anything particularly special. But adjusting it around her neck still felt like putting on heavy armor.

"Sentimental value," James said to himself. He cocked his head, looking at her pendant. "When did you lose them?"

"Two and a half years ago. A fire at the theater, of all things."

He smiled humorlessly. "Ah, right. Our favorite era in history."

His parents had to be dead, too, if he'd inherited the ship. And that was…he understood. Both Lily, and now Marlene.

"What about you?" Lily asked. "When did yours…."

"Oh, eight months ago, now."

He spoke with an affected air of calmness—she was plenty familiar with it from her own experience—and he didn't look at her, instead pretending to casually look out the window at the back of the ship.

Lily's hands, which seemed to have developed a mind of their own, nearly reached out to clasp his.

She ducked her head. "Did What's His Face…."

"Hm?" He looked back at her, then at his lap. "No. No, they didn't—they were pretty old, and being on a ship—it was difficult."

"That's rather….only most owners don't go on the ships themselves, I thought."

"They hadn't run the ships themselves for years, but then with You Know Who…. We were running refugees to France. Muggle-borns, half-bloods. Anyone You Know Who might've wanted."

And that sealed it for Lily.

She'd been so quick to judge him for not fighting What's His Face. She'd been fleetingly angry with him for lying about being a pirate, and inadvertently prolonging her stay on board.

But while Lily had been lifting trinkets off pirates, he'd been saving Muggle-borns. If she'd stayed in England, he might very well have saved her.

In that moment, she thought of nothing other than leaning over and pressing her lips against his.

Instead, she said, "Oh."

"Yeah. It's good work."

"That's brilliant that you're helping them. Us, really." She hadn't felt this ineloquent in a very long time. "Is that why your parents got the ship?"

"No, they ran a wizarding shipping firm, so they—well, I have several ships. Business has been on the decline, though."

"I can imagine."

"But it was good to have the ships ready for this. You Know Who has locked down the Floo network, and international Portkeys are tricky at best, so…yeah. Ships. Harder to track. Hold a lot of people. Good for refugee shuttling."

"That's really—" There were many words she could have said, none of which seemed remotely adequate. Too many of them came too close to revealing too much. "I'm sorry I ever said anything about you running away."

"Well, it's not like I do much."

"James, you're saving lives."

He shrugged. "Dumbledore would find another way, if I weren't around."

He wasn't watching her again, so obviously uncomfortable bringing himself any semblance of praise on this issue, and her heart clenched.

"Is that what you lot normally do, then?" she said, more to distract herself from thoughts of ravishing him than anything else. "When you're not pretending to be pirates, that is. You help refugees?"

"Nah," he said, shoulders relaxing. "Only Dorcas and Caradoc were helping me before this trip. My other crew members didn't fancy a longer trip – they've got families to protect, so I asked my friends. And, Merlin knows why, but they agreed to come."

It was hard to tell if he was truly baffled, or simply feigning it. Lily was inclined to believe the former.

He'd laid out some of his secrets, now, but it wasn't enough. He was so—he was so James. There were more secrets between them, though, and if she wanted—she needed to clear the air, yet.

Lily nodded. "They agreed, though, and now you're going to the Azores to do something What's His Face doesn't want you to do."

"Right," he said. And then he frowned. "Wait. Lily."

"I was bored, James," she said dismissively. "And I thought you were pirates because you told me you were pirates."

"Peter was locking that map up."

"Didn't we already establish you've got crap security?"

"Did you have another hairpin?"

It might have been monumentally stupid to point out his security flaw because she might need it again, but—

"Algernon," she said.

"The traitor," James breathed. "You used him."

"In his defense, I bribed him with bacon."

"Oh, you minx."

A shiver scurried up her spine. She leaned forward to try to hide it.

"So you got your hairpin and found the map." He sighed. "Of course you did. You did the one thing that would make us more suspicious of you."

"I thought it was a bloody treasure map, and I wanted—I thought I could crack it, so I looked at it a few times. It's still your fault for lying to me, you know. I thought I had something valuable on my hands."

"Oh, it's valuable, but not to Muggles." He tapped his fingers on the table. "If we're going to be…well, on the same page. I mean, we never figured out how you moved around on board. We looked for you in the library."

If she told him, she wouldn't be able to use her candle anymore. Not that she particularly wanted to—now that James knew she'd seen the map, she could save the rest of the candle for future adventures—but it was also her key to freedom if he turned on her again.

But she didn't think he would.

"The candle," she said, nodding toward the bag.

James pulled out her candle and inspected it. "What, like a Hand of Glory?"

"If a Hand of Glory makes you invisible, then yes."

He tucked the candle back in the bag and dug around a bit more. "That's everything you have?"

"Well, what did you expect to find, exactly?"

"I dunno. Lockpicks and jewels and artwork, maybe."

"I've got my hairpin. I've got my candle and my bag. That's enough for me to get by."

"I thought you'd have more…valuables."

"I sell whatever I take, either to travel or to eat. It's not—I don't do this out of greed."

"Right," he said absently. "Of course."

"So that's my secrets exposed." Her hands no longer itched to have her bag back in her possession; he'd take care of it. "I think turnabout's only fair play, though. So tell me, Captain Potter, what's in the Azores?"

"Well, if you've looked at the map…. I'm not sure I should say. I haven't asked—it's only—I suppose you're Muggle-born."

He tapped his fingers on the table again, his eyes briefly entranced by his own hand.

"We're looking for an island," he finally said. "It's in the Azores, we just don't know where, exactly. You have to come at it at from exactly the right angle or you'll never find it."

"The starting point and direction."

"Right. Someone embedded the island's location on that map in code, and we're trying to crack it. Well, mostly Peter is."

"Not that he doesn't seem decent enough as a person, but putting him in charge of the map might not have been the wisest move."

"I trust Peter," James said firmly. "He was always very good at puzzling together the ideas we came up with at Hogwarts."

"I saw his work on the map. He might be good at putting other things together, but he's not doing very well at this."

"Well, he's been trying. It's not easy. We help when we can, but there's so much work involved with maintaining the ship…."

She wasn't obligated to tell him the next part, but if this would help them fight What's His Face….

"There's something in there," Lily said. "That is, I noticed something that Peter hasn't, and I'm not sure what it means, but…."

James leaned toward her, eyes locked on Lily, and he nodded for her to continue.

"There's something I recognize," she said. "It's like it's right on the outside of my mind – I know it, but every time I try to look at it, it disappears."

"I'm not your captain, I know," he said. "You don't owe me anything. But if you have any insight, or thoughts on the map that you think could help…well, I hope you'll share them with us."

"Of course I'll tell you if I think of something. You said you were doing something What's His Face doesn't want done, which I assume is at the end of this map. But if you actually want me to solve it, it would probably help if you told me what, exactly, is on this island you're looking for."

James looked out the windows, his lips pressed together. The clouds were low and gloomy today, the ocean a dull gray.

After a long minute, he turned back to her. "We're looking for the Island of Prophecies."

"An island of prophecies." She laughed a little, only because of the things she might've expected, prophecies were nowhere near the list. "Of course, how could I not have guessed?"

"I suppose you might not know much about prophecies—I dunno if Snape ever told you about them—"

She shook her head.

"Right. Well, there are Seers who make real prophecies that come true. Not many Seers, but some. The Ministry—the old Ministry—kept copies of Seer prophecies and stored them away on the island."

"Why would the Ministry for Magic hide the prophecies on an island hundreds of miles away from England?"

"Security. They're very…people get very strange about prophecies, about trying to hear them and change things. The Ministry got tired of people trying to break in, and they wanted to make getting to prophecies more difficult. Bode—the bloke who made the map—he was a friend of my parents, worked in the Department of Mysteries. The Ministry had a portal door to the island to let the right people get to it easily, but Bode destroyed it before he fled the Ministry during the takeover."

"Awfully foresighted of him."

"He worked with the prophecies for a living, and he knew which prophecies existed, and...well, he knew what You Know Who wanted."

"Oh?"

James leaned forward. "There's a prophecy about You Know Who. Not many know, but it's about his downfall, and You Know Who will do near anything to get it."

"But he's been in power for years. Surely he's found the island and heard it by now."

"We're pretty confident he hasn't, and we couldn't go after it until now because we only just stole the map from the Ministry. Bode had only ever told us that there was a map, and we couldn't ask him how to solve it because—because he killed himself when the Death Eaters came for him, rather than let You Know Who learn how to find the prophecy."

Lily sat back and folded her arms. There weren't many things she would kill herself over, if anything. Clearly whatever this prophecy was—whether or not it would come true, which she personally doubted—James's crew and What's His Face treated it like dogma. And people would do all sorts of mad things for dogma.

"You took the map," Lily mused, "but What's His Face could have made a copy. He could still be working on finding the island himself. Unless he knew that you had the key, and he was waiting for you to take the map so he could follow you."

"Yes," James said darkly.

"Oh. So you thought I was—I see."

"Yeah."

"So you've got a map to solve, no clues to go with it, and we could just be wandering around the Azores for weeks, in a space we know will probably also have Death Eaters roaming about."

"Well…we have one clue, at least. But fat lot of good it's done us so far." He grimaced. "In the corner of the letter Bode sent us right before they found him, separate from everything else, he wrote 'oi.' We assume it's a clue, anyway, and not some random thing he tacked on at the end for no reason."

"Oi is a funny sort of clue."

"I certainly thought so."

Lily heard the door handle turn, and turned to find Sirius profiled against sunlight in the doorway.

"What's this?" he said, frowning.

James drew Lily's bag closed and slid it down the table to her. "Scheming."

"Liar," Sirius said, half a smirk on his face.

"You know me too well."

"Oi, is that my wand?"

Lily picked it up and tossed it to him, and he smoothly grabbed it from the air, even managing to grasp it by the handle.

"Oh, I did miss you," Sirius murmured to his wand. "Shame on you for taking it," he told Lily.

"Shame on you for treating me like shit."

"Shame on you for being a Death Eater."

"Come off it, Sirius," James sighed. "She didn't have to give it back."

Sirius looked mulish for a moment, and then feigned nonchalance. "Remus says you should convene the crew soon and let them know what's what."

"Of course. Have him round them up in a bit?"

"Aye aye," Sirius said, and he ducked out the door.

"We should go, too," James said. "Caradoc probably needs to get back to work, and if we don't want to leave Marlene completely unattended…."

"Did you want to be alone?" Lily asked quietly. "When your parents…."

"When mine—no. Not at all."

"I didn't either. But I couldn't stand to be around…."

"So you ran."

She smiled grimly, and pushed back in her chair. "And here we are."

"Sirius shared a bed with me for two weeks after."

"It must have been a tight fit."

"Well, it wasn't here, and he's—he fit in fine."

Lily dropped her book into her pouch, and then tucked that into her trouser pocket, feeling like she'd got a missing limb back. She could use her dagger on attackers. She could finish her book. If she wanted to leave the crew behind in the Azores, she had gold to barter passage.

She was free again, or at least she could be, once they neared land.

"I wish we knew what Marlene wanted," she said before they reached the door. "I hate…."

"Yeah. I know."

She followed him back down to the library, where Caradoc sat hunched forward in a chair, his elbows on his knees.

He sat up straight and nodded at Lily and James. "No word yet."

James compressed his lips and knocked on the door. "Marlene?"

Still she didn't answer, and James turned back around, shoulders hanging.

"That's all we can do." Lily reached out to brush her hand along his arm, and he smiled sadly at her.

The door handle creaked behind him, and Marlene stepped around him into the library, her hair tied back in a frayed bun, her eyes red and puffy.

"Hi," she said. "I think—I was going to sleep, but that's your bed, James, and you can—you can have your room back now. It's after lunch so I have to—I have to go sleep."

Lily and Caradoc locked eyes, neither quite sure what to say or do.

After a beat, Lily said, "Sleep sounds wonderful, Marlene. Do you want me to walk you down?"

"Oh, no, you're still injured. You shouldn't be moving about too much. Healer's orders." She looked around, seeming a little confused, and then settled her gaze on the door to the main deck. "Right. Sleep."

She passed by Lily as she crossed the room, and Lily almost reached out to grab her arm. There was nothing more to be said, though, and she watched Marlene walk out onto the deck with long, frantic steps.

Through the lace curtains Lily saw Dorcas finally turn away from the railing. Marlene took a step toward her, and Dorcas stood, arms hanging at her side, for a long moment. Then Dorcas crossed the space between them in two quick steps and wrapped her arms, stiff and vice-like, around Marlene's shoulders.

For a hug of sympathy, it was beyond short. To an outsider it probably would have looked terribly awkward, a forced, feigned gesture.

But Lily knew better.

Dorcas's arms wrenched themselves away from Marlene and she spun back to the rail. Marlene lingered for a moment, frozen in place. But after a moment she continued on her path across the deck and disappeared down the ladder.

"Caradoc," James said, without looking away from the window, "cook with the door open, yeah?"

Caradoc sighed. "Aye aye, Captain."

Sirius came in from the deck, followed by Dorcas and Peter.

"Remus is on watch," Sirius said, "and I figured Marlene could find out later…."

"Yeah." James drew his shoulders back and cleared his throat. "Right. I'll try to keep it short, everyone. The Death Eater snuck on in Oporto and hid in the magazine while I was off chasing Lily. She knew we'd be landing there – someone told her, but she didn't know how they knew. She was supposed to destroy our map, take care of as many of us as possible, and Portkey out."

"Should she be here for this?" Sirius jerked his head toward Lily.

James ignored him. "She doesn't know anything about what happened with Marlene's family. She said—" He abruptly tilted his head down and to the side, then shook his head and looked up again. "She had no idea who Lily was, for the record—"

"Means nothing," Sirius said under his breath.

"—but she did know some names Mad-Eye asked about, and was able to answer some of the things he wanted to know."

"Good," Dorcas said fervently.

"Yeah, well, I hope so, anyway. I need to think some more about what we're—what we're going to do with her, now."

Lily waited for Dorcas to shout, Kill her, but Dorcas remained silent, her arms folded tightly over her chest. Peter stood a safe distance from her, looking as though he might sick up.

"Caradoc," James said, "bring her regular meals. She's restrained, but use the normal precautions, all right?"

Caradoc nodded.

"Everyone else, steer well clear of the magazine. Sirius will set up some wards that should keep most of you away from there, and keep her in. This is for everyone's protection. I haven't spoken to Mad-Eye yet, but I'm confident he'll back me on that. And, please, since we do have a captive Death Eater on board, keep his advice in mind, yeah?"

Sirius's lips twitched.

"Right," James said. "That's it, then. Caradoc, please catch Marlene up on all this when she wakes up. And, you know…."

"Yes, James. Door open."

The rest of the crew did the only thing they could: try to return to life as normal. Sirius and James called out tacking spells, Peter worked in the library on the map, and Lily tried to finish her novel in the common room. Remus sat with her during his free shift, but Lily was fairly confident that between the two of them, they didn't read more than ten pages. She kept absently looking out the window and wrenching her attention back to her book. She'd never read so intently before in her life, ensuring she picked up every word rather than let her mind wander.

Marlene didn't appear again until the sun had vanished behind the horizon. She stood in the doorway to the common room, awash in candlelight, wearing a plastered-on smile.

"Hi," she said, dropping down next to Lily on the sofa.

"Hello." Lily set her book on the table and turned to Marlene. "I'm so sorry for your loss," she said, although it felt strange in her mouth. Not because they were the wrong words—those were the things that you said—but because Marlene didn't seem morose.

"Thanks. What did I miss out here?"

"Er, nothing."

"Figures. Your attack is probably all the excitement we'll have for a while."

Lily repressed a frown. "I'm fine without more excitement if that's what's on offer." She tried to come off as joking but she'd probably failed.

Or perhaps Marlene was too far gone to notice.

Marlene sighed. "Life on a ship is so dull."

Lily stared at her.

A moment later the door opened behind them, and Remus—brilliant, interrupting Remus—stuck his head through. "Marlene, would you join us on the forecastle deck? You, too, Lily. The captain's request."

Marlene's smile tightened further, but she crossed the room anyway, and Lily followed her.

It was normally James's turn on watch that shift, but only Sirius was missing from the group gathered on the deck.

"Marlene," James said, with more delicacy than Lily would have expected, "we thought we'd have…a send-off, of sorts. We thought we'd do a modification on the Welsh rites, without the fire, because I thought…we all wanted to say goodbye."

"Oh." Marlene blinked, her false smile dropping only for a moment. "All right."

At James's instruction, they formed a tight circle on the deck, with a brief gap between shoulders where Algernon sat next to James. Marlene stood between Caradoc and Dorcas, her shoulders tense.

One by one, the rest of the crew said a few words about the McKinnons, sharing stories and memories while the night wind whipped around them. A story about Marlene's mum making James tea, another from Hogwarts about Eli giving Peter detention, and yet another about Eli's fiancée, who put on one-woman shows for her friends when it suited her.

The McKinnons sounded like perfectly lovely people, but then again, most people did, once they were dead.

The others kept speaking, but Lily stopped listening after a while. A stone seemed to have formed in her throat early on in the ceremony, and the longing and desperation and frustration she could never seem to leave behind swarmed her.

If her parents hadn't died, she wouldn't have ended up on James's ship, wouldn't have been there to witness the McKinnons' pseudo-funeral.

But maybe she would have landed there all the same, maybe she still would've given pirating a chance. Her mum had taught her all those things, and surely she hadn't expected Lily to never want to try to use them….

Her mother might have been proud of her if she could see her now. Or perhaps not. Lily wasn't a pirate, after all. She was just…in between.

Her father wouldn't have approved of her life. He'd married a pirate, but Lily's mum had stopped pirating to be with him, and how could her mother have made that choice? How could she have given up everything she'd worked for to just to sit around the estate all day?

Lily might not have been cut out to be a pirate, but the domestic life her mother and sister had chosen wasn't for her, either.

She wanted to curl up under a blanket and never come out. Missing her parents never really went away. It just receded, the ocean retreating from a beach between waves.

But the waves, when they came, didn't reach quite as high as they used to, and they didn't knock Lily over anymore.

Lily glanced at Marlene, who'd been sent careening for the first time. She wished there were some way to spare Marlene all the subsequent waves, some way to keep her from finding herself in France a year later and suddenly crying while walking down the street.

But grief marched on at its own immutable pace, heartless to the whims of others.

There was a lull after Remus finished speaking—a charming but somber anecdote about Eli Healing him one night—during which everyone but Lily and Marlene pulled out their wand. James slowly raised his hand, until his wand pointed straight up to the stars, and the others followed suit.

Everyone else seemed to know what they were doing, but no one had thought to brief Lily on the procedure. Still, she could improvise, and she raised her fist in the air.

Marlene stood as still as a tree, not wearing her fake smile, but not looking solemn either, her features arranged in a rigid, neutral expression.

"The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes," James called out.

There was a half moment's pause, and then long streams of blinding white light burst out of their wands. Five jets of light arced high above the crew, past the sails, until they were streaks against a backdrop of twinkling stars. The lights curved sharply inward, colliding into a bright starburst that Lily watched through squinted eyes.

The intensity only lasted a second, though, as the lights began to dim—no, to fall apart. The beams had disintegrated into thousands of tiny, sparking balls of light, a cascade of them that drifted back down onto the crew.

Lily had never seen anything as perfectly, exquisitely beautiful as the field of stars floating around her. Their slow descent was somehow soothing, a moment of peace after a few frantic days. After a few restless years, truly.

The lights landed harmlessly on hair and shoulders and noses before vanishing altogether. One landed on the bridge of James's glasses, sending him into a sneeze.

But while Lily's heart finally felt something like calm, she forced herself to look toward Marlene.

Because none of this was for Lily. It was for the crew, who needed to say goodbye. And it was for Marlene, who needed to know she wasn't the only one grieving. That they were there for her.

The rest of the crew, visible in the moonlight and the sparks still raining onto them, watched the path of the lights, looking somber and pained, but better, somehow. Lighter.

Marlene was looking up, just like the others, but her expression was still fixed and unflinching. And whatever moment of peace Lily had been having was twisted.

It had worked for some of them. It had worked for Lily.

It had not worked for Marlene.